


the mortality of kings

by guiltylights



Category: One Piece
Genre: (please have at it i worked hard), Gen, HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY LUFFY, Post-Time Skip, do u notice they're often placed like that in show too, enough for it to be distinct, i googled a lot of nonsense for this fic, i love the concept of sanji and zoro being luffy's left and right hand men, i've been hacking at this fic on and off for MONTHS, mostly zoro-centric, my contribution of a birthday fic kind of i guess, not always but, this is as good as it's gonna get have at it, zoro at luffy's right and sanji at luffy's left
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 19:47:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18745876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guiltylights/pseuds/guiltylights
Summary: But then—Luffy, smiling impossibly wide and white up on the platform, looking something far from man and too unbearably close to myth in his acceptance and resolution, saying, saying, as Zoro stared wildly upwards in vehement disbelief, fighting against crowd and enemy and the inevitability of time, casually;‘my bad, I’m dying now.’ Do you remember Loguetown.Of course Zoro remembers Loguetown. Of course he does.‘Yeah,’ Zoro says, instead.Zoro and Sanji, the right and left-hand men of the future Pirate King.





	the mortality of kings

**Author's Note:**

> [time started: 27th Oct 18, 6.42pm;— ]
> 
> I had to google so much nonsense whilst writing this fic—some of my searches include, but are not limited to, “thousand sunny kitchen”, “what food goes well with sake”, “is sanji left-handed”, and my personal favourite, “how do straw-hat pirates get rid of trash”. 
> 
> I tried really hard on this fic, guys. In the sense that I wanted to try using imagery and associations in a way that isn't too overt, but it was really hard toeing the line between tasteful and sensitive incorporation and liberal beating over the heads with the metaphor stick. I hope it comes through - if it does, or doesn't, let me know! I can only improve with criticism >< Writing is hard guys.

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‘Kill me, Zoro.’

Zoro’s hands spasm around his swords. It’s with effort that Zoro unflexes his tight grip around the hilts, lowering the blades so that the tips just scratch the floor. He fights to keep his voice steady. ‘What did you just say?’ He asks, calmly, evenly. Dangerously.

Luffy grins up at Zoro from where he lies sprawled out on the rubbled floor. His chest rises and falls with his shallow heaving breaths, unsteady and stuttering in its rhythm, and Zoro almost hates him for that. There’s something thick choking up the edges of Zoro’s throat—anger, he wants to think. Fear, he knows better. Zoro clutches his swords in his hands, and stares down at his captain dying in front of him.

‘Kill me, Zoro.’

There’s something dripping into Zoro’s eyes. Blood or sweat, he doesn’t know, but he can feel it trickling down the nape of his neck, across his face, along his nose. The bandanna tied low across his eyes is soaked through and plastered to his forehead. He’d just had a serious fight; he feels wild, savage and indomitable, the edge of his blades shining like the teeth of a beast, but his captain in front of him is undeterred and unafraid.

Zoro takes half a step back, away from his captain’s prone form. ‘No.’

Luffy’s boyish features contort into something almost reproachful. ‘Zoro,’ he says again, more sternly this time, and Zoro closes his eyes, breathes in deep from his nose to stop himself from shouting.

‘I am _not_ killing you, Luffy.’

When Zoro opens his eyes again, he finds Luffy staring upwards, spread-eagled on the floor with his gaze turned towards the sky as though he hasn’t heard a single word Zoro has said.

‘Luffy.’ Zoro repeats. ‘Did you hear me? I said, I am _not_ killing y—'

‘I did it, didn’t I?’

Zoro pauses.

‘…Did what?’ He asks, after a beat.

‘I became Pirate King, didn’t I?’

Luffy’s ignoring him and sweeping along at his own pace as per usual, and as per usual, Zoro can only follow along, but there’s something so innately wrong about this entire situation that Zoro doesn’t know what to _do_ —there is no monster to cut, no opponent to fight against, no great battle to be won. There is no enemy here, nothing else but him and his captain in the face of his own tested loyalty, and Zoro is raging and helpless against it.

‘Yeah, you did,’ Zoro replies, anyway, his voice jerking out of him as instinctively and as naturally as a tide turns to the shore, and Zoro can do nothing but follow along. ‘Yeah, you became Pirate King.’

 _What the hell?_ A distant part of Zoro’s brain wonders. _Since when?_

Luffy laughs once, a snickering sound that Zoro has come to associate with mischief and miracles and merriment, and the sound comes out more pained than Zoro would have liked. Zoro’s swords scrape against the floor, useless. ‘Yeah, I did, didn’t I?’ Luffy laughs again. ‘Yeah, I did!’

Luffy sobers up. ‘I did,’ he repeats. Luffy looks Zoro in the eye. ‘So kill me, Zoro.’

The bloody hole punched through Luffy’s chest suddenly seems harsh and large and impossible to ignore. Distantly, outside of the furious white noise buzzing in his ears, Zoro can hear the rest of the crew running over; they’ve probably finished dealing with whatever problem they were tied up with before this and only just found them, but Zoro can’t really concentrate on the others right now, only on this moment between the two of them. Zoro clenches his jaw against the beat of blood in his ears, feels his fingers twitch. The movement feels as inevitable as what is to come.

Luffy is no longer heaving. His chest is eerily still as he says, ‘this is an order, Zoro. Kill me.’

Luffy is Zoro’s captain, and Zoro follows his captain. Zoro steps forward and sheathes his two swords along his hip; feels his resolution settle heavy like loyalty along his bones. If anything, Zoro has faith in Luffy and what he believes in. And this is what Luffy believes in. Zoro will take this chance, and bear the weight of whatever will come next.

Zoro places a hand on the hilt, and only hesitates slightly before unsheathing Wadou Ichimonji and raising it high. The line of its blade is strong and unwavering, the steel shine of its edge forebodingly bright in his grip. Zoro looks down, and sees Luffy only grin up in response.

Behind him, Zoro can hear the screams of their crew members; can hear Usopp’s panicked ‘what is he doing?’ and Chopper’s shrieks of ‘Zoro!’ and the stupid cook’s growl of ‘bastard’ and Robin’s sharp intake of breath all at once, somehow, all loud and sharp and clear as his blade, and it hurts all the more for what Zoro is about to do next.

Zoro grits his teeth, and swings down.

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Zoro jerks awake.

His jaw is locked tight and his muscles are tense as if he had just been in a fight. Zoro holds himself in place for a few seconds, before exhaling—taking silent slow measured breaths, in and out, counting the skips in his heartbeat until he finds none at all.

Zoro glances around. Usopp is snoring loudly in his bunk, the curly black mess of his hair and the crook of an elbow the only thing Zoro can make out from his bed. In the bunk next to him, Book is similarly fast asleep, his long limbs hanging out over the wooden edge of the bunk too small to accommodate his person, the jut of his white bones dully bright in the gloom. The bunks belonging to Sanji and Franky are empty—since their two-year reunion Franky’s body modifications has made it impossible for him to sleep crammed in the boys’ sleeping quarters’ beds, so he usually slept on the floor or in his workshop, and the cook is probably on his shift of ship watch right now.

Zoro shifts, and stands up from where he had fallen asleep sitting up with his back against the lockers. His three swords that had been propped up next to him at his side are strapped back to his right hip. Zoro’s initial feeling of uneasiness doesn’t subside. Zoro doesn’t dream often, not when he had been a child and not now, and usually the few times he does the effects are shaken off within the first few seconds of wakefulness, but somehow this one time the dream leaves him feeling testy and on edge in a way that Zoro finds unpleasant to bear.

On his way out of the quarters, Zoro pauses briefly next to Luffy’s bunk bed. His captain has sprawled himself out across the three empty bottom bunks, stringy limbs draped in every possible direction and bent in ways that would be impossible for the normal human body. Even in sleep, the emblematic straw hat is clamped firmly against his head, the rough yellow straw of it pressed between Luffy and the pillows and half-angled over to shade his face. He’s snoring loudly, safe and oblivious to the world around him; in the crook of his arm, Chopper is lying sideways with his own hat knocked askew, nestled against the side of Luffy’s chest right next to where Luffy’s chest scar is.

Zoro fixes his eye on his captain’s chest; watches the rise and fall of his even breaths, staring at where the shiny pinkish puckered skin of his scar meets in the center of his body. What he’s staring for, Zoro doesn’t know. Confirmation, maybe. Reassurance, he’s not so sure. After a moment, Zoro tears his gaze away with effort, and strides out of the door, shutting it behind him with a _click._

Fuck, he wants a drink.

His boots barely make a sound as he makes his way to the kitchen. Around him, the sea is dark and quiet—it’s in the early hours of the morning, and the sun has yet to rise. The early pre-dawn sea breeze is cool and briny against Zoro’s skin as he crosses the lawn of the Thousand Sunny, and he opens the door to the kitchen without so much as a knock or a warning. The kitchen light is on; of course it is.

Sanji doesn’t even look up from where he’s cutting up vegetables on a chopping board, his back turned towards the door.

‘What do you think you’re doing in my kitchen?’

‘Shut up, curlybrows,’ Zoro responds smoothly, shutting the kitchen door behind him. ‘Couldn’t sleep. I want a drink,’ he adds, and throws himself down onto the couches opposite the kitchen where Sanji is working; kicks his legs up on the armrest, folds his arms behind his head. ‘If we’ve still got any sake left in stock, I’ll take some of that.’ Zoro closes his eye.

Zoro hears Sanji _tsk_ irritably in response. ‘There’s not an ounce of manners in that barbaric green head of yours. What the hell makes you think I’ll just do what you say?’

Zoro huffs a sigh of irritation; it can never be easy, with this damn guy. ‘What are you even complaining about?’ He snaps. ‘Hurry up and pass a drink already; sparing just one wouldn’t hurt.’

There’s a sound like Sanji grinding his teeth, but dress shoes cross the kitchen floor in swift clicking footsteps. The unlatching of the locked refrigerator door, the _clink_ of glass coming from somewhere within the depths; and then the smell of cigarette smoke intensifying in the air as a shadow falls over Zoro and a bottle is dropped unceremoniously onto his chest. Zoro very veritably does not _oof_.

‘Here, your damn drink, shitty mosshead.’ Zoro opens his one eye to see Sanji lurking over him, frowning irritably down in his direction. There’s a cigarette pinched between his fingers in his left hand; Sanji lifts it to his lips to take a long drag, before dropping his hand away to point the cigarette into Zoro’s face. ‘That’s the only one you’re getting, so don’t ask for anymore, got it?’

Grumbling, Zoro looks down at the bottle in his hands as Sanji stalks away back behind the kitchen counter. There isn’t a lot of sake contained in the one bottle—this amount is normally what he drinks to start off with—but Zoro knows better than to fight the cook when it comes to matters of food. And anyway, right now Zoro’s more concerned with getting sake into him (no matter what amount) than he is with arguing with the cook.

Zoro breaks the seal on the sake bottle, and unscrews it open. The sound of chopping resumes in the kitchen, the steady thud of knife against wood a cadence to Zoro’s gulping swallows. The sake burns a smooth line down the back of his throat, to settle itself warm in his stomach—already Zoro feels better, vestiges of a bitter nightmare smoothed over by routine and familiarity. This, in the kitchen, is reality.

So when Sanji temporarily walks out of the kitchen to take out the trash, the initial preparations for the morning’s breakfast already done and set aside for the moment, Zoro gets up from the couch and settles himself into a seat on the right side of the dining table. Sanji slips back in, quiet as a shadow, and settles himself down on the other side, directly in front of Zoro, hands lighting up a fresh cigarette and mouth blowing out the smoke.

‘Aren’t you supposed to be on ship watch tonight?’ Zoro asks, glancing at Sanji out of the corner of his eye.

‘What, you gonna complain that I’m not out there guarding the ship?’ Sanji shoots back. ‘I can perfectly watch out for the ship whilst still being in the kitchen—breakfast needed preparation, so don’t go picking arguments, dumbass.’

Zoro growls in the back of his throat, and doesn’t deign to respond. They lapse into silence.

They sit together quietly, for a while. Zoro chugs the last of the sake, turns the bottle right upside down over his mouth to catch every last drop, before setting the empty bottle down with a _thump_ on the mint green tablecloth. The lines of Sanji’s shoulders are long and relaxed; his eyes, or at least the one that Zoro can see, are half-lidded. On the wall, the clock ticks steadily.

Sanji exhales a long thin tendril of smoke.

‘So, you gonna explain what you’re doing cluttering up my kitchen at 6am in the morning, or am I gonna have to beat the answer out of you?’

Zoro snorts, leans back. ‘As if you could ever hope to beat me.’

‘Don’t dodge the damn question.’ Sanji leans forward and stubs out part of his cigarette in the ashtray on the table. ‘You’re normally asleep at this time of the night, and yet here you are awake and demanding booze and being an eyesore in my kitchen, so the least you could do really is to stop being a contrary bastard and tell me why.’

Zoro stiffens; _bastard._ It’s slight, only a minute tightening of his shoulders from above his folded arms and nothing more, but Sanji immediately catches on it, and his eye flicks over Zoro’s form as Zoro steadfastly avoids his gaze. Sanji doesn’t say anything; but the way he slumps back against his seat and sighs is enough.

Sanji stares up at the ceiling. ‘What is it?’ He asks again, lowly.

Zoro looks away, and chooses to stare at the porthole embedded into the kitchen door instead. ‘Just had a dream, is all.’ His fingers spasm briefly on the sleeves of his robe.

‘What sort of dream?’

Zoro licks his lips. ‘Luffy became Pirate King.’

“Oh?” Sanji tips back forward, and grins a lopsided smirk that curls up like that annoyingly swirly eyebrow of his, his teeth white around where they’re clenched around his cigarette. Zoro breathes in deeply, counts to twenty, and reminds himself that the irritation he feels is nobody’s fault but his own. ‘Sounds like a pretty great dream, actually. So what, did you not become the world’s greatest swordsman in it or something—'

 _‘No,’_ Zoro snaps, testily. Sanji doesn’t flinch, but Zoro regrets his outburst anyway, feels ashamed at his own momentary loss of control and selfish impulsivity. He grits his teeth, settles back into his seat, and glares harder at the porthole in the kitchen door. Forcing the words out of his mouth, unwilling as accountability, Zoro elaborates, ‘Luffy became Pirate King, and then he asked me to kill him.’

 _Luffy asked me to kill him._ The words hang in the air between the both of them grey as smoke, heavy and burdensome as love and guilt. Zoro hates the power speech gives—he’s no superstitious man, doesn’t believe in the force of an all-knowing, all-listening divine, but to describe his dreams gives it a form of tangibility outside of his own mind that Zoro loathes to acknowledge. _Kill me, Zoro._

Sanji frowns deeply. His eyebrow creases over his eye as he glances off to his right. ‘The hell?’ There’s a sneer in the corner of Sanji’s lips, but Zoro knows him better than that. There’s something like fear there, maybe. Something like insecurity. ‘You know Luffy would never ask you to do that.’

‘I know,’ Zoro says, and means it.

It’s a truth as honest and simple as conviction: Luffy would never ask Zoro to do something like that. There are days, sometimes, when Luffy would sit at the figurehead of the Thousand Sunny while gazing out over the wide blue seas, and look as though he’s lost in it. A kind of tragedy, a kind of mourning—the wide brim of Luffy’s salt-soaked hat pressed against his chest in Luffy’s own version of a prayer, right in the middle of where his scar is. Zoro knows that Luffy knows better than anyone the pain of losing your loved ones as they slip from right between your own helpless fingertips. Absentmindedly, Zoro runs a thumb along the embroidered hilt of Wadou Ichimonji, in honour and in remembrance. The people one loves don’t just go away. Zoro knows that well.

Sanji blows out a cloud of smoke. ‘Well, if you know that, then what’s the problem?’ His eye flicks back to Zoro.

Zoro breathes in deep, and looks off to the right. Light shines dully off the edge of the empty sake bottle; Zoro fixes his eye on it. ‘It’s nothing.’

It’s not that Zoro doesn’t believe Luffy would never ask him to do something like kill him; it’s how Zoro had been willing to do it. To say he did not hesitate would be unfair, because Zoro loves his captain and knows the rest of the crew does, too, fiercely and wholly with a kind of dedication that is only proportional to the love they have received in turn. It had been that same love that had stalled his sword in his dream, choked his throat up in something close to fear disguised as rage, made him step away and say _‘no’_ when Luffy had first said, _kill me, Zoro._ But in the end, there hadn’t been a choice in the matter, not really—Luffy is his captain and whatever his captain wants, Zoro has always given. Not because of some unthinking adherance to an authority, but because of conviction and faith, in Luffy and what he believed in, even if Zoro didn’t necessarily understand it. Despite his own reluctance Zoro had believed that what he had been about to do would be the right choice, even if the aftermath would’ve killed them all. And this here, is the problem, this—how far does his loyalty go?

Zoro clenches his hand into a fist on his thigh.

What is his loyalty worth if it would cut down the very same person it answers to?

Sanji leans and stares back up at the ceiling. His hair lies flat against his face, where it curtains one eye. ‘Do you remember,’ he starts, changing the topic, waving the hand holding his cigarette vaguely around in thought, ‘that town we went to, just before we entered the Grand Line— the one that Gol D. Roger was born and died on, what was its name— Loguetown. Do you remember Loguetown?’

 _Do you remember Loguetown._ The town that had been a prelude to a new beginning for them as pirates; Loguetown. How could Zoro forget—it had been the town where Zoro had found his cursed sword Kitetsu, among other things. But more than that, it had been the town that had nearly been the ending for them, too—Zoro can’t forget Luffy, strapped in and helpless up on the execution platform as Zoro and Sanji fought furiously to get to him, the leering vicious faces of Buggy and Alvida suddenly so much less of a joke and more of a threat, now. Zoro remembers desperately wishing, in the moment, that he had taken them out in the past when he had had the chance. The wide swinging arc of a scimitar, inches away from Luffy’s neck, an ending that would’ve cut down not just Luffy’s, but all of their lives as they knew it. Because that’s what it would have done. There is no pirate crew without a captain, and Luffy is the only captain they recognise. Zoro closes his eye. _Do you remember Loguetown._

And Zoro remembers Luffy—his captain, Luffy, on what is by all accounts going to be his deathbed, proclaiming to the gaping residents of Loguetown, a loud and impossible declaration, _‘I’m the man who’s going to become pirate king’._ A statement of not denial but belief, looking out of place on a man strapped in a guillotine, and yet somehow it had been the most believable thing. But then—Luffy, smiling impossibly wide and white up on the platform, looking something far from man and too unbearably close to myth in his acceptance and resolution, saying, saying, as Zoro stared wildly upwards in vehement disbelief, fighting against crowd and enemy and the inevitability of time, casually; _‘my bad, I’m dying now.’Do you remember Loguetown._ Of course Zoro remembers Loguetown. Of course he does.

‘Yeah,’ Zoro says, instead.

Sanji tips his chin down, to the side, and Zoro can only see the curtain of Sanji’s hair as he stares out to the side. ‘Did you think that Luffy was truly going to die, back then?’ He asks, quiet.

‘Yes,’ Zoro says.

‘But also, no,’ Sanji infers, shrewd.

‘…Yes.’ Zoro admits.

Their captain up on that platform, in the face of oblivion and annihilation, had seemed simultaneously as human as a boy and as untouchable as the sky. They had all come to a profound conclusion, that day. Luffy doesn’t fear death, not in the way most people do—this is something that they’ve known, implicitly, ever since Arlong Park and Cocoyashi and even Syrup Village, before that, but just because Luffy doesn’t fear death doesn’t mean that he is impervious to it. Zoro forgets that, sometimes, esepcially when Luffy beats back towering odds and snatches miracles out of the jaws of circumstances with grit and sheer willpower alone, but back then, up on the execution platform, Zoro had been irrevocably reminded of it: his captain a boy, helpless as anyone else. He had hated it, in the moment. He had welcomed it, afterwards, when what seemed like luck and god’s favour had saved Luffy from his death, blue-white lightning striking down from the skies like benediction and a god-given second chance. His captain is not infallible, Zoro knows that now. He’s made this mistake once before, and he will not make it again. But at the same time, Zoro knows that he’s able to accept this reminder, take it as how he is, only because Luffy had survived.

Zoro opens his eye. ‘Luffy’s not invincible.’

His words are neither a lamentation, nor a fear—simply a statement of fact, an observation released into the grey pre-dawn hours of the morning. Luffy is not invincible. He is the man who is going to become Pirate King, but kings are still mortal. Kings can still fall.

Zoro looks down, and clenches and unclenches his fist.

The light humming noise of appraisal Sanji makes is what breaks Zoro out of his thoughts. Zoro looks up, bewildered. ‘No, he isn’t,’ Sanji agrees, easily, casually, as though the statement is nothing at all, before tilting his head, taking a long drag of his cigarette. Zoro doesn’t gape, but well— ‘and really, our captain’s an idiot, isn’t he?’

‘What—'

‘Luffy’s constantly running headlong into the worse situations and picking fights with people way bigger than he is, and he doesn’t have an impulse control or any kind of common sense. He’s also ruled by his emotions—’ and here Sanji pauses, snorts, ‘—and his stomach, depending on the time of day, so probability-wise, our captain is more prone to dying than the average pirate, actually, don’t you think?’ Sanji continues. ‘But you know—'

‘What are you trying to say, shit-cook?’ Zoro snaps, rattled—the image of Luffy with a hole torn through his chest, bloody and broken and ravaged, flares up in the back of Zoro’s eyelids, stamps itself like a hanging mirage into the air. ‘What kind of a goddamn crew-mate are you, talking about your captain like this?’

Sanji shoots him an irritated look. ‘Fucking let me finish, asshole,’ he retorts, leaning forward and pointedly stubbing out the last bit of his cigarette before dropping it into the ashtray along with the rest of the burned-out cigarette filters. Zoro huffs but leans back; shoves his left hand underneath the table to clench at his thigh.

 _‘But,’_ Sanji resumes, ‘Luffy isn’t going to die, because that’s what we’re damn here for.’

Zoro’s mouth, which had been open in preparation for an argument, shuts with a _snap._ On the wall, the clock ticks.

Sanji leans forward, folding his arms on top of the table cloth, and looks Zoro directly in the eye. ‘Listen, mosshead,’ he begins, serious.

‘Luffy is our captain, and I know we both believe in his strength, but he isn’t infallible; he could die. Luffy’s still human. He can still get injured.’ Sanji pauses. ‘I’m not saying that I think Luffy can live forever, because he can’t. But Luffy can’t die, at least not until he becomes Pirate King.’

Zoro watches as Sanji searches his breast pocket for a pack of cigarettes and pulls one out. Sanji lights one up, and breathes in; looks more comfortable for having both the nicotine and something to do with his hands. He continues.

‘But there are monsters, in the New World. We’re going to have to face opponents who are stronger and faster and more impossible to defeat than before, and all of them are people Luffy will have to beat for his ambitions. I’m not saying that Luffy is weak. Neither am I suggesting that we fight Luffy’s battles for him. But what I mean,’ and here Sanji jabs the cigarette in Zoro’s direction, ‘is that it’s our job to fight down the opponents surrounding the main bad guy, so that Luffy can concentrate on what’s most important and not worry about anything else. It’s our job to support Luffy in what he’s doing.’

Sanji stares at Zoro. _‘That’s_ our job as his crew-mates, mosshead. _That’s_ where our loyalty lies, _that’s_ what we need to do. Not anything else. Not ending his life or any bullshit like that.’

Sanji holds Zoro’s gaze. ‘Isn’t that what we trained for two years for?’ Sanji asks.

Sanji’s gaze is steady—there’s no hesitation, no doubt about his words or his own mission: _Luffy is the man who is going to become the Pirate King._ A conviction simple as love and duty, a declaration firm in its determination. _Luffy is the man who is going to become Pirate King, and I am going to be part of what gets him there._

Zoro thinks of pinkish puckered scar tissue, rising and falling steadily in the gloom, and doesn’t say anything at all. But Sanji notices when the tension bleeds out of Zoro, because he leans back and smirks, satisfied. ‘Finally got it, you bastard?’

This time around, Zoro doesn’t flinch. He might’ve grinned, but nobody can say. ‘Heh. Who knows?’

Sanji rolls his eye. ‘As annoying as ever,’ he says, looking off to the side. Sanji brings the cigarette to his lips—and the lit ember of his cigarette end is as bright as a spark. Zoro closes his eye, breathes in deeply, and centers his own resolve and loyalty—as he opens his eye, his gaze drops to Wadou Ichimonji at his side, and finally Zoro understands. It’s not that they don’t have their own ambitions. It’s simply that their goals have gotten larger, have started to encompass something more than themselves, and they now surround the golden glory of a boy whom they will follow like the rise and fall of the sun. Sanji is going to become the greatest chef who finds the mythical ocean All Blue, as the left-hand man of the man who is going to become Pirate King. Zoro is going to become the greatest swordsman in the world, as the right-hand man of the man who is going to become the Pirate King. And there’s nothing else to it.

Sanji pushes his chair back, and gets up from his seat in one easy movement. ‘Now that that’s been settled, get out of my kitchen,’ he orders. ‘I have breakfast to prepare and you’re in the way.’ Zoro rolls his own eye, but obligingly gets up anyway, and heads out. When he reaches the door, there’s a sound behind him, and Zoro turns around just in time to catch the empty sake bottle thrown over his left shoulder.

‘And make yourself useful and take that out with you, will you,’ Sanji says, already back in the kitchen and heating the stove.

‘Fine,’ Zoro says, with no real ire.

‘Breakfast will be ready in an hour,’ Sanji calls out, just as Zoro swings the door shut.

Outside, the soft light of the sun is spilling out just over the rise of the sea. Zoro looks out over the ocean; dawn is breaking.

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**Author's Note:**

> The fic alternatively titled, “how much left and right imagery can one writer shove into a fic before it starts being contrived?” Put a guess as to how many times I’ve done it in the comments and I’ll tell you if you’re right or wrong. Hint: think about it in terms of 3D-space. 
> 
> I wanted to touch on the whole Thriller Bark and Zoro thing, with Sanji being the only one who witnessed it up-close and firsthand and being one of the few people who know about it, and what it says about them being crew members of Luffy, but I didn’t know how to work it in :( Also do you guys think Sanji feels a bit too much like a foil to Zoro? I was thinking for a very long time about how to give more independence to Sanji as a character in this fic, but I couldn’t think of a way to do it without making it seem weird…
> 
> I have a [tumblr](http://guilty-lights.tumblr.com/), if you wanna to stop by! Come scream at me about one piece or anything else I'm interested in, I'll be glad to scream back. Also leave comments/kudos if you liked to fic, they're what keeps a fic writer going :)
> 
> [time ended: 8th May 19, 12:11am;— ]


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